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Pre-programme assessments told a frank story: participants' confidence in Human-Centred Design sat at just 1.23 out of 5. Mastery of the Theory of Change, a core tool for designing health interventions, hovered at 2.17. The Population Health in Action (PHIA) programme offered by the CHI Health and Social Change Academy (CHI HSCA) had been recently developed to help close this gap. However, the doctors were not confident their course could deliver. While content expertise was strong, there remained an opportunity to enhance learning design to better support application and impact.
Rethinking the Design, Not Just the Content
NHG Health engaged IAL through the NACE@IAL consultancy programme in 2025 to redesign PHIA using adult learning principles and workplace learning methodologies.The goal was not simply to refresh the content, but to reshape how learning was structured and experienced from the ground up.
An 18-week journey. Three Phases, One Idea
Together with their IAL workplace learning consultant, the NHG Health team redesigned PHIA into an 18-week action-learning journey structured in three phases. A Foundations Bootcamp introduced Human-Centred Design, Behavioural Science, and Change Management through hands-on application. This was followed by Project Development Sprints—mentor-led coaching clinics using the OSCAR model—where multidisciplinary teams refined real workplace challenges into actionable solutions, supported by a “Discovery Gap” to test ideas in the community. The journey culminated in a Final Showcase, where proposals were presented to senior leadership for potential implementationBeyond the programme redesign, the project also strengthened NHG Health's internal capabilities. Mentors were coached on new facilitation approaches, and the team developed a suite of reusable workplace learning tools, including job aids, coaching frameworks, and courseware templates that could be applied to future training programmes across the organisation.
Raymond Chow, Director of CHI Academies Office, summed up the spirit behind the initiative:
"This initiative reflects our commitment to advancing population health by building capabilities beyond the hospital setting. Through CHI Health and Social Change Academy, we are equipping multidisciplinary teams and community partners with the skills and frameworks to co-create solutions that address complex health and social needs at scale."
Raymond Chow, Director, CHI Academies Office
Tangible Outcomes, Lasting Impact
The results, when they came, were striking. Participants' confidence in Human-Centred Design rose from a pre-course score of 1.23 to 3.46 to nearly three times their starting point! Mastery of Theory of Change climbed from 2.17 to 3.61. Perhaps more telling: when participants were assessed on the COM-B behavioural science framework after a two-month gap between programme modules, retention was high. They had not just learned it, they had absorbed it into how they thought.On the question of application, whether learning had translated into genuine intent to change practice, the target was 60%. The actual figure was 85%. Reflection reports showed teams conducting independent fieldwork between sessions: interviewing community members, running surveys, designing interventions from what they found.
Four multidisciplinary teams each developed a fully scoped proposal, grounded in fieldwork they had conducted themselves and presented it to senior NHG Health leadership for potential implementation. One team designed a Direct Access System to remove administrative friction from Advance Care Planning referrals.
Another proposed a Health Peer Mentor model to extend population health support into the community. A third tackled preventive oral health for elderly residents, a population often overlooked in chronic care conversations. The fourth addressed the post-discharge coordination gap, which is the critical and vulnerable period after a patient leaves hospital. Not one of these was a classroom exercise. Each was a real idea, ready to move forward.
In total, the programme positively impacted 100 employees across the organisation.
From Learning to Lasting Capability
For Dr Lim Wei-Yen, Head of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine, TTSH the experience went beyond a single programme. The skills gained have opened new possibilities for how NHG Health approaches adult education more broadly:
"Embarking on this journey to transform the way we build capability in our staff in population health delivery has been a great experience. Learning state-of-the-art methods in adult teaching and modern pedagogy has improved the way we think about how we teach, transformed the delivery of the PHIA course, and given us useful skills that can be applied in other adult education programmes that we are working on."
Dr Lim Wei-Yen, Head, Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine
For NHG Health, the 18 weeks were not the end of the story. A 12-month follow-up is planned to track whether the four scoped initiatives move from proposal to practice. The faculty who delivered PHIA are now applying what they learned about adult pedagogy to other training programmes across the organisation. The tools built for this project, namely, coaching frameworks, job aids, facilitation guides belong to NHG Health to use again.
What began as a curriculum review became something quieter and more durable: a shift in how the organisation thinks about learning itself. Not as content to be delivered, but as something that happens in the doing — in the clinic, in the community, in the Discovery Gap between one session and the next.
This collaboration reflects the shared commitment amongst NHG Health, CHI and IAL to strengthen workforce capability and learning outcomes. NHG Health and CHI’s journey with IAL began with a question: is our training actually working? If that question resonates with you, NACE@IAL's consultancy can help your organisation find the answer and build something better. Our workplace learning specialists work alongside your team to diagnose performance gaps, co-design targeted interventions, and measure what changes.
Talk to us about starting your workplace learning journey: https://www.ial.edu.sg/for-corporates/consultancy-services/